2015 Spring finally arrived.
The newly planted fruit trees looked very sorry for themselves as spring came.
But as the days got warmer slowly the trees put out buds that turned into leaves and blossoms that started attracting the pollinating insects.
Tense Times in the Dry 2015 Summer
I'm not sure of the actual rain fall data, but it appeared we had almost no rain all summer, and as I observed the new trees each day looking for growth progress I kept hoping that the Hugelkultur planting method I'd used would hold enough moisture in the very sandy ground to allow the young trees to prosper.
Drought or pests ?
I was not sure what was causing this drying and dead leaf problem. So on taking advice I decided to prun back any such twigs, and it appered to stop and not reoccure.
Spending time observing shadow patterns.
Spending more time observing in the orchard area also confirmed the shadow patterns cast by the large mature oaks and sykamors on the other side of the field. Whilst thinking about options for thinning out to let more sun light onto the orchard growing areas, I had some ideas that led on to the possibility of creating a forest garden so I suspect there will be more to come on that one.
The lack of rain in early summer caused the grass on the orchard slope to go brown as can be seen in the two photos of the new cider apple trees above, but they dug in deep to their Hugelkulture footings and started to fruit. As did the two varieties of crab apples helped along the their lupin companions. |
Summer into Autum Abundance
The abundance of fruit became evident as the summer progressed to the extent that I had to take action to prevent branches breaking on mature trees due to the weight of hanging fruit.